HAROLD L. LEUPP BERKELEY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA > v M©lBll!GASfS, A WAUilRA^IITIS ©F Hf7 BIT jr 0 IF 0 '© © © F IE m, o LONDON: © ILB U TR M AK" ID B JB I NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1S81. THE LAST OF THE M O H I CANS; A NARRATIVE OF 1757. " Mislike me not, for my complexion, The shadowed livery of the burnished sun." BY THE AUTHOR OF " THE PILOT," " THE SPY," &c. REVISED, CORRECTED, AND ILLUSTRATED WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION, ETC. BY THE AUTHOR. LONDON: HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET; BELL AND BRADFUTE, EDINBURGH; AND GUMMING, DUBLIN. 1831. GIFT INTRODUCTION . /f, 31 XT is believed that the scene of this tale, and most of the information necessary to understand its allusions, are rendered sufficiently obvious to the reader, in the text itself, or in the accompanying notes. Still there is so much obscurity in the Indian traditions, and so much confusion in the Indian names, as to render some explanation useful. Few men exhibit greater diversity, or, if we may so express it, greater antithesis of character, than the native warrior of North America. In war, he is daring, boastful, cunning, ruthless, self-denying, and self-de voted ; in peace, just, generous, hospitable, revengeful, superstitious, modest, and commonly chaste. These are qualities, it is true, which do not distinguish all alike; but they are so far the predominating traits of these remarkable people, as to be characteristic. It is generally believed that the Aborigines of the American continent have an Asiatic origin. There are many physical as well as moral facts which cor roborate this opinion, and some few that would seem to weigh against it. The colour of the Indian, the writer believes, is peculiar to himself; and while his cheek-bones have a very striking indication of a Tartar origin, his eyes have not. Climate may have had great influence on the former, but it is difficult to see how it can have '. 960 VI INTRODUCTION. produced the substantial difference which exists in the latter. The imagery of the Indian, both in his poetry and his oratory, is Oriental, — chastened, and perhaps improved, by the limited range of his practical know ledge. He draws his metaphors from the clouds, the seasons, the birds, the beasts, and the vegetable world. In this, perhaps, he does no more than any other energetic and imaginative race would do, being compelled to set bounds to fancy by experience ; but the North American Indian clothes his ideas in a dress that is so different from that of the African, for instance, and so Oriental in itself, as to be remarked. His language, too, has the richness and sententious fulness of the Chinese. He will express a phrase in a word, and he will qualify the meaning of an entire sentence by a syllable ; he will even convey different significations by the simplest inflexions of the voice. Philologists, who have devoted much time to the study, have said that there were but two or three lan guages, properly speaking, among all the numerous tribes which formerly occupied the country that now composes the United States. They ascribe the known difficulty one people have in understanding another to corruptions and dialects. The writer remembers to have been present at an interview between two chiefs of the Great Prairies west of the Mississippi, and when an interpreter was in attendance who spoke both their languages. The warriors appeared to be on the most friendly terms, and seemingly conversed much together ; yet, according to the ac count of the interpreter, each was absolutely igno rant of what the other said. They were of hostile tribes, brought together by the influence of the INTRODUCTION. Vll American government ; and it is worthy of remark, that a common policy led them both to adopt the same subject. They mutually exhorted each other to be of use in the event of the chances of war throwing either of the parties into the hands of his enemies. Whatever may be the truth, as respects the root and the genius of the Indian tongues, it is quite certain they are now so distinct in their words as to possess most of the disadvantages of strange languages : hence much of the embarrassment that has arisen in learning their histories, and most of the uncertainty which exists in their traditions. Like nations of higher pretensions, the American In dian gives a very different account of his own tribe or race from that which is given by other people. He is much addicted to over-estimating his own perfections, and undervaluing those of his rival or his enemy ; a trait which may possibly be thought corroborative of the Mosaic account of the creation. •^ke Whites have assisted greatly in rendering the traditions of the Aborigines more obscure by their own manner of corrupting names. Thus, the term used in the title of this book has undergone the changes of Mahicanni, Mohicans, and Mohegans ; the latter being the word commonly used by the Whites. When it is remembered that the Dutch (who first settled New York), the English, and the French, all gave appellations to the tribes that dwelt within the country which is the scene of this story, and that the Indians not only gave different names to their enemies, but frequently to themselves, the cause of the confu sion will be understood. In these pages, Lenni, Lenape, Lenope, Delawares, VIM INTRODUCTION. Wapanachki, and Mohicans, all mean the same people, or tribes of the same stock. The Mengwe, the Maquas, the Mingoes, and the Iroquois, though not all strictly the same,, are identified frequently by the speakers, being politically confederated and opposed to those just named. Mingo was a term of peculiar reproach, as were Mengwe and Maqua in a less degree. Oneida is the name of a particular and powerful tribe of this confederation. The Mohicans were the possessors of the country first occupied by the Europeans in this portion of the continent. They were, consequently, the first dispos sessed ; and the seemingly inevitable fate of all these people, who disappear before the advances, or it might be termed the inroad, of civilisation, as the verdure of their native forests fall before the nipping frost, is re presented as having already befallen them. There is sufficient historical truth in the picture to justify the use that has been made of it. Before closing this introduction, it will not be im proper to say a word of an important character of this legend, who is also a conspicuous actor in two other tales of the same writer. To portray an individual as a scout in the wars in which England and France con tended for the possession of the American continent, a hunter in that season of activity which so immediately succeeded the peace of 1783, and a lone trapper in the Prairies after the policy of the republic threw open those interminable wastes to the enterprise of the half wild beings who hang between society and the wilder ness, is poetically to furnish a witness to the truth of those wonderful alterations which distinguish the pro gress of the American nation, to a degree that has been INTRODUCTION. ix hitherto unknown, and to which hundreds of living men might equally speak. In this particular the fiction has no merit as an invention. Of the character in question, the writer has no more to say, than that he represents a man of native goodness, removed from the temptations of civilised life, though not entirely forgetful of its prejudices and lessons, ex posed to the customs of barbarity, and yet perhaps more improved than injured by the association, and be traying the weaknesses as well as the virtues both of his situation and of his birth. It would, perhaps, have been more observant of reality to have drawn him of less moral elevation, but it would have also been less attractive ; and the business of a writer of fiction is to approach, as near as his powers will allow, to poetry. After this avowal, it is scarcely necessary to add, that individual character had little to do with either the conception or the filling up of this fanciful personage, It was believed that enough had been sacrificed to truth in preserving the language and the dramatic keeping necessary to the part. In point of fact, the country which is the scene of the following tale has undergone as little change, since the historical events alluded to had place, as almost any other district of equal extent within the whole limits of the United States. There are fashionable and well- attended watering-places at and near the spring where Hawk-eye halted to drink, and roads traverse the forests where he and his friends were compelled to journey without even a path. Glenn's has a small village ; and while William Henry, and even a fortress of later date, are only to be traced as ruins, there is another village on the shores of the Horican. But, beyond this, the X INTRODUCTION. enterprise and energy of a people who have done so much in other places have done little here. The whole of that wilderness, in which the latter incidents of the legend occurred is nearly a wilderness still, though the red man has entirely deserted this part of the state. Of all the tribes named in these pages, there exist only a few half-civilised beings of the Oneidas, on the reservations of their people in New York. The rest have disappeared, either from the regions in which their fathers dwelt, or altogether from the earth. THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. CHAPTER I. Mine ear is open, and my heart prepared ; The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold : — Say, is my kingdom lost ? Shakspeare. IT was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered, before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained Eu ropean who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in ef fecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict. But, emulating the patience and self-denial of the practised native warriors, they learned to overcome every difficulty j and it would seem that, in time, there was no recess of the woods so dark, nor any secret place so lovely, that it might claim exemption from the inroads of those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance, or to uphold the cold and selfish policy of the distant monarchs of Europe. Perhaps no district throughout the wide extent of the intermediate frontiers can furnish a livelier picture of the cruelty and fierceness of the savage warfare of those periods, than the country which lies between the head waters of the Hudson and the adjacent lakes. B 2 THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. The facilities which nature had there offered to the march of the combatants were too obvious to be neglected. The lengthened sheet of the Champlain stretched from the frontiers of Canada., deep within the borders of the neigh bouring province of New- York, forming a natural passage across half the distance that the French were compelled to master in order to strike their enemies. Near its southern termination, it received the contributions of another lake, whose waters were so limpid, as to have been exclusively selected by the Jesuit missionaries, to perform the typical purification of baptism, and to obtain for it the title of the lake